“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.” – Maya Angelou
The Future of Storytelling
Until last week, my niggling concerns for the future of storytelling were contained. Sure, I have anxiously anticipated the loss of the long sentences of Virginia Woolf, the simplified prose of Ernest Hemmingway, the adverbs of Mark Twain, and grieved. But I had it under control, until an unlikely, brilliant theatre event enhanced my worries: ‘Sunset Boulevard’.
Popularity
In this education season when correlative conjunctions receive better marks than imported vocabulary, and robotic rules are favoured over authentic voice, Sunset’s theme shouts at the top of its lungs: popularity comes and goes. Demonstrated by the great writers of the past who successfully used the no no’s of today, adverbs, lengthy sentences, straightforward writing, it is indisputable that popularity indeed comes and goes. This cold truth, delivered in the film by a has been actress, Norma Desmond, further calls out the insignificance of popularity. In the same way her 30 million fans shunned the antagonist when she got old, today’s excessive rules will also one day be shunned, but the untold stories that have been supressed by these rules will never be told.
Suppressed Writers
By suppressing students in our education system and writers in our literary circles with unnecessary demands for counting adverbs and using although and also, we are creating a story telling culture not unlike Frank Oz’s horror movie, ‘Stepford Wives’. The muted writers are collateral damage like the wives in the film. I’m worried we’re teaching our future writers to duplicate, to create material that is very obedient but lacking in authentic personality.
Quotes
“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.”- W. Somerset Maugham
“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.” – Salman Rushdie
“A story should entertain the writer, too.” – Stephen King
“Writing is like a spiritual manifestation of something deep within us we don’t really know is there.” – Joyce Carol Oates
Have you tried Amanda Dykes? I found she can turn a beautiful phrase.
Hi Louise, Thanks for sharing your insightful post. I’m happy to read books where the rules have been successfully broken. More often than not, I’ll find a story that’s full of adverbs is telling rather than showing the action in the story. I don’t mind reading adverbs if they’re enhancing the overall quality of the story. 😊